Part 8

With regard to the first statement, it may be sufficient to say that between the period of Dryden’s literary activity and the publication of Swift’s _Battle of the Books_ and _Tale of a Tub_ were flourishing Hobbes, Izaak Walton, Bunyan, Temple, and Locke; that between the publication of the _Tale of a Tub_ and of Shaftesbury’s collected writings were flourishing Addison, Steele, De Foe, Arbuthnot, Berkeley. With regard to the second statement, it would be interesting to know how a writer who had been preceded by Bacon, Hobbes and Locke, could be described as a writer who had been the first “to break down the barrier which excluded England from taking her proper place in the civilization of literary Europe.” The truth is, that Shaftesbury exercised no influence at all on Continental Literature until long after our Literature had generally become influential in France. Equally absurd and baseless is the remark that he “set an example of the kind of prose that was to mark the central years of the century.” Whose prose was affected by him? Bolingbroke’s? or Fielding’s? or Richardson’s? or Middleton’s? or Johnson’s? or Goldsmith’s? or Hume’s? or Hawkesworth’s? or Sterne’s? or Smollett’s? or Chesterfield’s? that of the writers in the _Monthly Review_? or in the _Adventurer_? or in the _World_? or in the _Connoisseur_? To say of Shaftesbury’s style that “it glitters and rings,” is to say what betrays utter ignorance of its characteristics. As a rule, it is diffuse, involved, and cumbrous, affected, but with an affectation which sedulously aims at the very opposite effects of “glittering and ringing.” When he is eloquent, as in the _Moralists_, he imitates the style of Plato; his vice is florid verbosity; it may be doubted whether a single sentence could be found to which Mr. Gosse’s description would be applicable. If, it may be added, his style had “fallen completely into neglect,” it is somewhat surprising that “he should set an example for the kind of prose which was to mark the central years of the century.” When we are told that he was “the first Englishman who attempted to harmonize the beautiful with the true and the good,” we ask in amazement whether Mr. Gosse has ever inspected the _Hymns_ of Spenser and the writings of the Cambridge Platonists; and when he tells us that without a Shaftesbury there would hardly have been a Ruskin or a Pater, we would suggest to him that both Ruskin and Pater were perhaps not ignorant of the Platonic Dialogues. In the account given of Spenser, a poem is attributed to him which he never wrote. “In one of his early pieces, _The Oak and The Briar_, went far,” etc., the oak and the briar is simply an episode in the second eclogue of the _Shepherd’s Calendar_. Mr. Gosse, probably finding it quoted in some book of selections, has jumped to the conclusion that it is a separate poem. Of Mr. Gosse’s qualifications for dealing with Spenser, we have, by the way, an excellent example in the following remark: “Spenser, although he boasted of his classical acquirements, was singularly little affected by Greek or even Latin ideas.” Spenser’s _Hymns_ in honour of Love and in Honour of Beauty are simply saturated with Platonism, being indeed directly derived from the _Phædrus_ and the _Symposium_, numberless passages from which are interwoven with the poems. The whole scheme of the _Faerie Queene_ was suggested by, and based on, Aristotle’s _Ethics_ with elaborate particularity, Arthur, in his relation to the several knights, corresponding to the virtue μεγαλοψυχια in its relation to the other virtues. The conclusion of the tenth canto of the first book is simply an allegorical presentation of the relation of the βιος θεωρητικος to practical life. The “Castle of Medina” in the second book is a minutely technical exposition of the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean, modified by the Platonic theory of morals: the three mothers being the λογιστικη, the επιθυμητικη, and θυμητικη, the three daughters, Elissa, Perissa, and Medina, being respectively the Aristotelian ελλειψις, the ὑπερβολη and the μεσοτης. In fact, the whole passage is simply an allegory of the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean. The whole of the ninth canto of the second book is founded on the famous passage in the _Timæus_ describing the anatomy of man. In truth the poem teems with references to Plato and Aristotle, and with passages imitated from the Greek poets, as every scholar knows. And this is a poet “singularly little affected by Greek ideas!”

The same astonishing ignorance is displayed in a remark about Milton. We are told that in his youth he was “slightly subjected to influence from Spenser.” If Mr. Gosse had any adequate acquaintance with Milton and Spenser, he would have known that Spenser was to Milton almost what Homer was to Virgil, that Spenser’s influence simply pervades his poems, not his youthful poems only, but _Paradise Lost_ and even _Paradise Regained_. On page 194 we find this sentence: “From 1660 onwards ... what France originally, and then England, chose was the _imitatio veterum_, the Literature in prose and verse which seemed most closely to copy the models of Latin style. Aristotle and Horace were taken, not merely as patterns, but as arbiters.” It would be very interesting to know what English author took Aristotle as a pattern for style. Is Mr. Gosse acquainted with the characteristics of Aristotle’s style? Should he ever become so, he will probably have some sense of the immeasurable absurdity of asserting that our prose writers from 1660 onwards took that style for their model. On a par with this is the assertion that up to 1605 Bacon had mainly issued his works in “Ciceronian Latin.” Is Mr. Gosse aware of the meaning of “Ciceronian Latin”? Very “Ciceronian” indeed is Bacon’s Latinity, and particularly that of the _Meditationes Sacræ_, the only work published in Latin by Bacon up to 1605! It is scarcely necessary to say, in passing, that such works as Bacon had published up to 1605 were, with the one exception referred to, all in English. Nothing, it may be added, is so annoying in this book as its slushy dilettantism. Mr. Gosse appears to be incapable of accuracy and precision. Thus he tells us that Chaucer’s expedition to Italy in 1372 was “the first of several Italian expeditions.” Chaucer, so far as is known, visited Italy, after this, exactly once. Again, he tells us that the _Complaint of Mars_ and the _Parliament of Fowls_ are interesting as showing that Chaucer had completely abandoned his imitation of French models. Chaucer wrote several poems in the pure French style, and based on French models, after the date of these poems. Such would be the Rondel _Merciless Beauty_ suggested by Williamme d’Amiens, the _Compleynt of Venus_, partly adapted and partly translated from three Ballades by Sir Otes de Graunson, and the _Compleynt to his Empty Purse_, modelled on a Ballade by Eustache Deschamps, while French influence continued to modify his work throughout. On page 238 we are told that Thomson revived the Spenserian stanza; it had been revived by Pope, Prior, Shenstone, and Akenside. On page 151 we are informed that the first instalment of Clarendon’s History remained unprinted till 1752, and the rest of it till 1759. If Mr. Gosse knew anything about one of the most remarkable controversies of the eighteenth century, he would have known that the greater part of it was printed and published between 1702 and 1704, and frequently reprinted between 1704 and 1731.

There is not a chapter in the book which does not teem with errors. Trissino’s _Sofonisba_ was not the only work in which blank verse had attained any prominence in Italy about 1515; it had been employed in works equally prominent, by Rucellai in his _Rosmunda_, and in his _Oreste_, as well as in his didactic poem _L’Api_, and by Alamanni in his _Antigone_, all of which were composed within a few years of that date. On page 120 we are told that Davies was the first to employ, on a long flight, the heroic quatrain; it had been employed by Spenser in a poem extending to nearly a thousand lines. Nor was Surrey’s essay in _terza rima_ “the earliest in the language.” Chaucer made the same experiment, though a little irregularly, in the _Compleynt to his Lady_. We are told on page 79 that Gascoigne was “the first translator of Greek tragedy.” Gascoigne never translated a line from the Greek. His _Jocasta_, to which presumably the reference is made, is simply an adaptation of Ludovico Dolce’s _Giocasta_. On page 25 we are informed that “Gower’s French verse has mainly disappeared.” Gower is not known to have written anything in French except the _Ballades_ and the _Speculum Meditantis_, both of which are extant, as it is inexcusable in any historian of English Literature not to know. The account given on page 25 of the _Confessio Amantis_ shows that Mr. Gosse is very imperfectly acquainted with what he so fluently criticises, or he would have been aware that the seventh book is purely episodical and has nothing whatever to do with “The lover’s symptoms and experience.” In the account of Pope we are informed that “Boileau discouraged love poetry and Pope did not seriously attempt it.” Pope is the author of the most famous love poem in the eighteenth century, _Eloisa to Abelard_, to say nothing of the _Elegy to an Unfortunate Lady_, of the beautiful hymn to Love in the second chorus in the tragedy of _Brutus_, and the exquisite fragment supposed to have been addressed to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. “The satires of Pope,” he continues, “would not have been written but for those of his French predecessor.” Can Mr. Gosse possibly be ignorant that the satires of Pope are modelled on the Satires and Epistles of Horace, that they owe absolutely nothing to Boileau, not even the hint for applying Roman satire to modern times, as he had precedents in his own countrymen Dryden and Rochester?

Mr. Gosse’s criticism is often very amusing, as here, speaking of Gibbon: “Perhaps he leaned on the strength of his style too much, and _sacrificed the abstract to the concrete_.” Of all historians who have ever lived, Gibbon is the most “abstract” and has most sacrificed the “concrete” to the “abstract,” as every student of history knows. On a par with this is the prodigious statement (p. 291) that there is “an absence of emotional imagination” in Burke! That excellent man, Mr. Pecksniff, was, we are told, in the habit of using any word that occurred to him as having a fine sound and rounding a sentence well, without much care for its meaning; “and this,” says his biographer “he did so boldly and in such an imposing manner that he would sometimes stagger the wisest people and make them gasp again.” This is precisely Mr. Gosse’s method. About the propriety of his epithets and statements, so long as they sound well, he never troubles himself; sometimes they are so vague as to mean anything, as often they have no meaning at all, as here: “His [that is Shelley’s] style, carefully considered, is seen to rest on a basis built about 1760, from which it is every moment springing and sparkling, like a fountain, in columns of ebullient lyricism.” Could pure nonsense go further? We have another illustration of the same audacity of absurd assertion on page 260. We are there informed--Mr. Gosse is speaking of our prose literature about the centre of the eighteenth century--that “Philosophy by this time had become detached from _belles lettres_; it was now quite indifferent to those who practised it, whether their sentences were harmonious or no.... Philosophy in fact quitted literature.” If there was any period in our prose literature when philosophy was in the closest alliance with belles lettres, and was most studious of the graces of style, it was between about 1750 and 1771. In those years appeared Hutcheson’s _System of Moral Philosophy_, Adam Smith’s _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, one of the most eloquent philosophical treatises ever written, Burke’s _Treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful_, Reid’s _Inquiry into the Human Mind_, Tucker’s _Light of Nature Pursued_, Beattie’s _Essay on Truth_, to say nothing of Hume’s _Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals_, his _Political Discourses_, and his _Natural History of Religion_, all of them works pre-eminently distinguished by the graces of style, while so far from philosophy quitting belles lettres, it was during these years that the foundations of philosophical criticism were laid by Burke, Harris, Hurd, Kames, and others. Mr. Gosse appears to have forgotten that he had himself told us (p. 205) that Shaftesbury’s style set the example of the prose which was to mark the central years of the century! Thus again Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_ is “an entertaining neurotic compendium”; Bacon’s _Essays_ are “often mere notations ... enlarged in many cases merely to receive the impressions of a Machiavellian ingenuity.” Shelley’s _Triumph of Life_ is “a noble but vague gnomic poem, in which Petrarch’s Trionfi are summed up and sometimes excelled.” Keats’ “great odes are Titanic and Titianic.” On page 284 we are informed that for fifteen years after the close of 1800 “poetry may be said to have been stationary in England.” When we remember that within these years appeared the best of Wordsworth’s poems, the best of Coleridge’s, the best of Scott’s, the best of Crabbe’s, the first two cantos of _Childe Harold_, the best of Campbell’s, the best of Moore’s, and of Southey’s--we wonder what can be meant, till we read on to find that it was “on the contrary extremely active.” But “its activity took the form of the gradual acceptance of the new romantic ideas, the slow expulsion of the old classic taste, and the multiplication of examples of what had once for all been supremely accomplished in the hollows of the Quantocks.” In other words, its activity took the form of its activity, and its activity led to its becoming stationary. Mr. Gosse is sometimes solemnly oracular, as here: “It is a sentimental error to suppose that the winds of God blow only through the green tree; it is sometimes the dry tree which is peculiarly favourable to their passage.” It is not sometimes, we submit, but always that the dry tree will be most propitious to their passage. But we like Mr. Gosse best when he is eloquent, as here: “In the chapel of Milton’s brain, entirely devoted though it was to a Biblical form of worship, there were flutes and trumpets to accompany one vast commanding organ.” No wonder poor Milton suffered, as we know he did suffer, from insomnia!

The statement that “so miserable is the poverty of the first half of the seventeenth century, when we have mentioned Pecock and Capgrave, there is no other prose writer to be named,” is bad enough. But to sum up Pecock’s work with the remark, “the matter is paradoxical and casuistical reasoning on controversial points, in which he secures the sympathy neither of the new thought nor the old,” is to demonstrate that Mr. Gosse knows nothing whatever about it. The _Repressor_ is in many important respects one of the most remarkable works in our early prose Literature. It would be interesting to know what is the meaning of the following: “The masterpiece of Chillingworth stands almost alone in a sort of underwood of Theophrastian character sketches.” Does Mr. Gosse suppose that English prose Literature in and about 1637 is represented by Hall’s _Characters of Vices and Virtues_, by Sir Thomas Overbury’s _Characters_, and by Earle’s _Microcosmographie_, which appeared respectively, not in and about 1637, but in 1608, in 1614, and in 1628? If this was the underwood in which Chillingworth’s work stood, it stood also in a dense forest represented by some of the most celebrated prose writings of the seventeenth century, such as the greater part of the writings of Bacon and of Raleigh, the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Selden’s _Titles of Honour_ and _Mare Clausum_, Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s _De Veritate_, Feltham’s _Resolves_, the best of Hall’s writings, Purchas’ _Pilgrims_, Barclay’s _Argenis_, the Histories of Speed, Stowe, Hayward, and Raleigh, Heylin’s _Microcosmus_, Prynne’s _Histrio-Mastix_, and the famous sermons of Lancelot Andrewes, all of which appeared between 1608 and 1637. These are the sort of remarks in which Mr. Gosse habitually indulges. We have another example in the following: “Shelley’s attitude to style is in the main retrograde,” a generalization based on the fact that he was no admirer of “the arabesque of the cockney school.” But were Shelley’s chief contemporaries admirers of the arabesque of the cockney school, or were they affected by it? Was Wordsworth, was Coleridge, or Southey, or Byron, or Crabbe, or Campbell, or Landor?--a question which Mr. Gosse probably never stopped to ask himself. On a par with this is the absurd assertion that “English poetry was born again during the autumn months of 1797.” The appearance of the _Lyrical Ballads_ did not make, but mark, an era in our poetry. The revolution of which they were the expression had been maturing, as surely but distinctly as the social and political revolution marked by the assembly of the States-General ten years before. There was hardly a note struck in the _Lyrical Ballads_ which had not been struck in our poetry between 1740 and the date of their appearance.

To call this compilation a _History of Modern English Literature_ is ludicrous. Mr. Gosse has no conception even of the eras into which our Literature naturally falls, or of the movements which in each of those eras defined themselves. Nothing could be more misleading and inadequate than the accounts given of the historians, theologians, philosophers, and critics, many of whom--nay, whole schools of whom--are not noticed at all. Sidney’s epoch-marking little treatise is dismissed in four unmeaning lines as “an urbane and eloquent essay, which labours under but one disadvantage, namely, that when it was composed in 1581 there was scarcely any poesy in England to be defended. This was posthumously printed in 1595.” Ben Jonson’s not less remarkable _Discoveries_ are not even mentioned. How writers like Bacon, Hooker, Hobbes, Locke, and Berkeley fare we have not space to illustrate. Mr. Gosse, indeed, judging by his excursions into the realms of theology and philosophy, has certainly been wise to assign more space to _The Flower and the Leaf_ than is assigned to Hobbes, Barrow, Butler, and Paley put together. We have by no means exhausted the list of blunders and absurdities to be found in this book; but we have, we fear, exhausted the patience of our readers, and we must bring our examination of it to a close.

The melancholy thing about all this is the perfect impunity with which such works as these can be given to the public. We have not the smallest doubt that this book has been extolled to the skies in reviews which have not detected a single error in it, and which have accepted its generalizations and its criticisms with unquestioning credulity; and we have as little doubt that those scholars who have discerned its defects and absurdities have chosen, from motives possibly of kindness, possibly of prudence, and possibly in mere contempt, to maintain silence about them. Had it appeared twenty years ago, it would instantly have been exposed and exploded, indeed no writer would have dared to insult serious readers by such a publication. What every reader has a right to demand from those who take upon themselves to instruct him are sincerity, industry, and competence; and what no critic has a right to condone is ostentatious indifference on the part of an author to the responsibilities incurred by him in undertaking to teach the public.

The sooner Mr. Gosse, and writers like Mr. Gosse, come to understand that, however ingeniously expressed, reckless generalizations, random assertions and the specious semblance of knowledge, erudition, and authority may pass current for a time, but are certain at last to be detected and exposed, the better for themselves and the better for their readers. If, too, they wish justice to be done to the accomplishments which they really possess, they will do well to remember what is implied in the proverb _Ne sutor ultra crepidam_, and what the Germans mean by VERMESSENHEIT.

LOG-ROLLING AND EDUCATION

We see no objection to Mutual Admiration Societies; they are institutions which afford much pleasure, and can, as a rule, do little harm. If vanity be a foible, it is a foible well worth cherishing, and will be treated tenderly even by a philosopher. For, of all the illusions which give a zest to life, the illusions created by this flattering passion are the most delightful and inspiring. They are so easily evoked; they respond with such impartial obsequiousness to the call of the humblest magician. He has but to speak the word--and they are made; to command--and they are created. A becomes what B and C pronounce him to be, and what A and C have done for B, that will B and A do in turn for C. It is a delicious occupation, no doubt, a feast for each, in which no crude surfeit reigns, where, in Bacon’s phrase, satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable; it is like the herbage in the Paradise of the Spanish poet, “quanto mas se goza mas renace,”--the more we enjoy it the more it grows. It is an old game--“Vetus fabula per novos histriones”:--

“’Twas, ‘Sir, your law,’ and ‘Sir, your eloquence,’ ‘Yours Cowper’s manner and yours Talbot’s sense’; Thus we dispose of all poetic merit: Yours Milton’s genius and mine Homer’s spirit. Walk with respect behind, while we at ease Weave laurel crowns and take what name we please. ‘My dear Tibullus!’ if that will not do, Let me be Horace, and be Ovid you.”

And there is this advantage. If a sufficient number of magicians can, or will, combine, these illusions may not only serve each magician for life, but become, for a time, simply indistinguishable from realities. Now, as we said before, we see no great harm in this. It is, to say the least, a very amiable and brotherly employment; and were it quite disinterested and honest, it would be closely allied with that virtue which St. Paul exalts above all virtues. But everything has or ought to have its limits. When Boswell attempted to defend certain Methodists who had been expelled from the University of Oxford, Johnson retorted that the University was perfectly right--“They were examined, and found to be mighty ignorant fellows.” “But,” said Boswell, “was it not hard to expel them? for I am told they were good beings.” “I believe,” replied the sage, “that they might be good beings, but they were not fit to be in the University of Oxford. A cow is a very good animal in the field, but we turn her out of a garden.”

To our certain knowledge many of those who owe their reputation to the art to which we are referring are good beings, and we have little doubt that most of those who are least scrupulous in practising it are good beings also. Indeed it may be conceded at once that there is always a strong presumption that members of Mutual Admiration Societies belong to this class. On the reciprocity of essentially Christian virtues their very existence depends. Whatever may be thought of their heads, their hearts are pretty sure to be in the right place. They may, it is true, act more in the spirit of the precept that we should do unto others as we would they should do unto us than in that of the precept which pronounces that it is more blessed to give than to receive. This, however, is a trifle--one of those distinctions without differences which are so common in Christian ethics. But for ourselves we must, as we have said before, discriminate. To the cow in the field we have no objection; it is of the cow in the garden that we complain.